If you have ever ordered anything on Ebay you will notice that the price of shipping like everything else is at the hands of the seller. Many of those seller’s are fair and look only to make money from the product that they are auctioning.
However more and more seller’s are using the shipping as a way to get even more of your money. It doesn’t help the fact that the shipping is usually all the way at the bottom of the page and someone who is new or overlooks that aspect can easily find themselves buying a $10 weighing 3lbs with a $40 shipping.
Two days ago, my sister is on the phone telling me that she sees the mp3 player she wants to buy and it was just pure luck that she hadn’t purchased or bid on it yet. Otherwise she would have bought an mp3 player for $0.01 and $39.99 shipping. She was only looking to spend around $20 for a little bit of space. Nothing fancy. But she was caught in the “great deal” and didn’t pay much attention to other important facts in the auction.
If i’m buying anything that size for that amount of shipping it had better be coming next day shipping. That is the only excuse to have shipping that high on a small mp3 player. Here are some examples of the shipping problem on Ebay.
I do understand that its up to the buyer to get the item or not, but it gets pretty frustrating when your looking for a certain item and all of the different sellers are charging ridiculous shipping fees all the while claiming that shipping fees cover more than just shipping the item. Yes I understand that a box is going to cost you $25. Right.
I have also spoken to a seller about his high fees and he told me that he used to charge actual shipping costs but then all the other mp3 vendors were and so to keep up he had to change as well.
I can understand Ebay’s problem with it. Even if half the buyers complained how can they mandate shipping fees? There are so many different products being bought and sold and there isn’t really a good way to regulate a specific shipping price. Especially when you consider shipping overseas. In the meantime buyers are left doing an online two-step trying to find an item that isn’t horribly over-priced.